I believe there is at least 1 scum between dimochka, jimbob, and mpolo. Mpolo and jimbob aren't buddies if one is scum. Current plan is to lynch dimoch and if he flips town kill mpolo (likelier town than jimbob imo and I need to kill a townie N1) and if he flips town push a jimbob lynch. I'm confident in there being at least 1 scum between dimochka and jimbob.

It's still very early and this is all open to change based on flips and if players manage to "out townie" me. Hopefully scum team can keep themselves alive for awhile to make my life easier. I want town to be distracted by scum enough that I can sneak out a win last minute.

Hi Sabrar, I’m so excited about this game! I’ve been talking about it for days but my husband has stopped pretending to be interested and is ignoring me. We have three experienced players from another site, BoomFrog is back, and of course SDK. I feel very outclassed.

This should be an exciting game. Scum team is me, jimbob and SDK. I'm godfather/roleblocker, jimbob is false inventor, SDK is rolecop. We also have a 1-shot ninja kill that can be used by anyone. We also have day chat, which is kind of fun. SDK is worried about the new guys, so I am too Going to quote his first post in its entirety since it gives a good synopsis of how things are developing:

SDK wrote:Day chat is a fantastic ability. Probably the most powerful ability we have between us. We should try to make good use of it.

I am André Linoge (a.k.a. 'Legion') and have a Role Cop ability.

Sabrar's line "Some of them showed great promise with the touch" leads me to believe that we likely have a large number of info roles in this game, which jives with our factional ninja ability.

FrozenFlame is experienced. I can tell from his first post, and not just because he said so. He's going to try to rattle the xkcd meta, so be ready for it. I'll try to give you guys heads up as we go if I see any traps that you might be unfamiliar with. His first attempt came after seeing plytho's reaction to the second vote on LaserGuy - he's going to get a wagon going and see what shakes out. I'm going to join him.

LaserGuy, I'm voting for you too, but do not freak out! Or, at least, if you do, make sure you do it properly. You've got 4 votes on your wagon (out of 7 for the lynch) which is totally fine and is actually really standard on other sites. People around here tiptoe too much, so act accordingly, but you probably don't need more than "The four votes on me are a little concerning. Do any of you have a reason for your votes?" followed by some behavioural analysis or questions completely unrelated to the fact that people are voting for you. If you do address it, make sure you address me in the same way. Do not think of me as your teammate, do not consider the effect your words might have on our relationship in-thread.

Based on the amount that they scare me, we should probably kill one of the HBC guys (FrozenFlame included) Night 1, but that might be too mean. We'll see how things shake out, but Gopher might be a good choice too. He tends to be very unforgiving of me missing on my reads (which is going to happen this game, assuming we're doing okay). Hopefully the three HBteers can shove a wedge between themselves so we don't have to actively break them up. Them forming a town block is our worst case scenario. If they agree on a target and successfully lynch scum, one of them must be killed.

jimbob's powers are interesting. He can pass Cop/Watcher/Bulletproof/Doctor. Cop always returns town. Watcher will always return a specific player assigned by jimbob (or work normally), bulletproof doesn't protect against the mafia NK, and the doctor pills prevent that person from receiving help from a doctor. The bulletproof does protect against other kills, so I'd like to have him pass that to me or SDK in N2. The watcher item looks like it's probably junk, since he has to tell it which player to report when he gives it, but that player could be dead by the time it is used.

Unfortunately, the only townie that so far is putting in a lot of content is dimochka, so he'll probably end up as first lynch target by default. His meta is very shady anyway.

Eh, a plytho or bessie kill may be superior to an mpolo kill. Both seem unlikely to be lynched, especially the former. The former might be ideal. The less unlynchable players, the better. I'm really going to need mafia's help to get this done, hoping they pull through.

Looks like activity is slowly increasing which is super good. Not being able to play my main enjoyment from modding comes from all the speculations by the players (requiring lots of content from them) and of course the funny interactions of their abilities such as:jimbob is planning to give 1-shot Cop to bessie hoping that she will investigate him and find him Town (due to it being rigged). Little does he know that bessie is actually the full-time Cop and will possibly investigate him N1 obtaining true result.

Seeing SDK play again on D1 just reminds me how scummy I read his behavior D1. I know if I was playing right now, I would be all over him for his nonchalance and latent scummyness (or at least non-town unhelpfullness)

Belial wrote:I am not even in the same country code as "the mood for this shit."

My role is Jake Chambers so I feel like with an iron clad claim later I don't need to prove my townniness right now. My initial post saying "If I appear scummy it is on purpose" is actually a softclaim of this. Also, my vote change from domichka to Jim is a lie, I still think domichka is scum and Jim probably isn't. I just want to see if any scum will bite at the opportunity to save domichka. If no one follows I will have to reconsider the domichka lynch, but I am predicting LaserGuy will also switch votes now.

"Everything I need to know about parenting I learned from cooking. Don't be afraid to experiment, and eat your mistakes." - Cronos

Sabrar wrote:To my knowledge no games are currently announced for the near future.

I'll run one if push comes to shove. It'll have a twist, though. I'm thinking either "Prison Term Mafia" or "The Grammy Goes To...", just not sure which will run better in practice. I've got several half-formed games lying around that I can always throw together in a pinch!

roband, SDK, everyone else, I think a newbie/vanilla game is a great idea! I wish we were a big enough community to always have one planned/in sign-ups/running. I’m just not sure if we have enough interest to fill it. But maybe if we had more newbie games we could draw in some of the spectators who would like to try mafia but got scared when they read Wheel of Time 2 (jimbob don't take this wrong, the more I think about it the greater I think that game was). SDK, if you want to run one, I would be happy to help out or play.

YOLOSWAG, I would play your game! We have some very talented mods that write spectacular flavor, and some very talented mods that create spectacular games with little or no flavor, and both are good. If you wanted someone to write flavor you can ask here for a co-mod, maybe someone that doesn’t have time to play would volunteer.

So, I finally get around to posting here. I'm properly scum for the first time in well over a year (I don't count Trials of the Pariah), along with a pair of team-mates. I am Leland Gaunt and a False Inventor (with a safe claim of Inventor). My items are 1-shots for cop, doctor, bulletproof, and watcher, where cop always gives town, bulletproof doesn't protect against scum kill, doctor actually prevents doctor usage, and watcher allows me to fake the result (or leave it as genuine).

Regarding my defensiveness, I'll be honest and say that I reckon it's not related to my alignment, but who knows how the subconscious mind works. However, with Yoloswag having switched wagons, and pressure mounting on BoomFrog, I'm feeling quietly confident that I've dodged the bullet today. I then give somebody a cop tonight, which hopefully they use N2 on me, and I'm more or less home free (of course, not entirely, because a real cop would mess things up completely if they did target me on either night), at least for now.

I'm glad I didn't sign up for dark tower because I've been hella busy the past week or so (three assignments due!), so while I love the idea of a newbie game, I'm not going to be able to play.

Hey, give me a few more weeks and if people want a newbie game I'll make one based on that bird song I posted a few weeks ago. I'll steal a well-known setup from one of those mafia websites so I won't need to do balancing, and then I can just write flavour about how ibises are bin juice drinking gronks.

Currently it looks like Town will lose their Cop, Doc and Tracker before D2, with the only upside that the Vig will be Neighborized. Only the JOAT didn't submit any action yet and he might get a successful Doc-save as scum is targeting 2 very townie-looking players.

The thing about mpolo is sincerer, maybe you haven't been mafia for a long time, but I've often found my mafia-mates to be very passive if I don't coordinate them. Btw, I consider everyone to be a passive player except you, me, SDK, and possibly plytho. Plytho would have started asking questions in mafia chat right away, you would have asked the mafia to make a plan, and SDK or I would have outlined a plan for the mafia. Everyone else would very possibly be quite on mafia chat until the game really started rolling.

My jaw hit the floor and I laughed at the same time when I read this. I was seriously speechless. Ok, how does BoomFrog know this? Three possibilities.1. I’m that transparent and shouldn’t even be playing this game, and next time I’m scum I will get caught on page 1. 2. BoomFrog is mafia with SDK so he knows this is exactly what I would do (and what SDK would do).3. The following is true:

I am a master of the arts of Mafia. If I appear scummy then it was intentional, if I appear to be town it's meaningless.

Hello Gojoe thread! I’m a standard cop. I’ve never been a cop before, and I realized that I’m not sure about claiming. I know it’s come up in many games I’ve played, but I’ve never really paid attention because it didn’t apply to me and I figured whatever [insert most experienced player in any particular game] said was what the cop should do. If this was a case of a town/mafia result, it would be easy because a one-for-one town/mafia trade is a good deal, but I’ll get a result of town/not-town and it's not worth dying for a survivor.

I’m going to break convention and I’m not investigating who I believe are the scummiest players in the game, jimbobmacdoodle and Carlington, partly because I think both will be easy to catch as scum. I’m investigating SDK, because he’s unreadable if he decides to be. If he’s town, I would like to know I can trust his reads. I’m a little worried that he’s scum because of his defending jimbob, and SDK is my favorite person to play with so that would really suck if I get a non-town result.

The other thing that would suck is if Carlington really is scum because it hurts to have to attack him in every game. I just did a quick skim of the games on this page and Carlington and I haven’t been on the same team in any of them.

Last game town lost the cop and the doctor N1 and won in the end. So I'm still hopeful. I almost protected bessie but chose Zyth instead.

bessie wrote:

The thing about mpolo is sincerer, maybe you haven't been mafia for a long time, but I've often found my mafia-mates to be very passive if I don't coordinate them. Btw, I consider everyone to be a passive player except you, me, SDK, and possibly plytho. Plytho would have started asking questions in mafia chat right away, you would have asked the mafia to make a plan, and SDK or I would have outlined a plan for the mafia. Everyone else would very possibly be quite on mafia chat until the game really started rolling.

My jaw hit the floor and I laughed at the same time when I read this. I was seriously speechless. Ok, how does BoomFrog know this? Three possibilities.1. I’m that transparent and shouldn’t even be playing this game, and next time I’m scum I will get caught on page 1. 2. BoomFrog is mafia with SDK so he knows this is exactly what I would do (and what SDK would do).3. The following is true:

I am a master of the arts of Mafia. If I appear scummy then it was intentional, if I appear to be town it's meaningless.

So, I am a weak bodyguard for #HBC | Zyth. I have used up my one-shot protection. I have a certain fear that he is a serial killer, based on the role, but town is probably likelier. In any case, I win if Zyth survives. Go team Zyth!

What I'm a lot more frustrated about is not that we're losing, but that people keep trying to tell me how I'm wrong to play the way I do. I do decently well following my own learnings / rules. I appreciate advice, but saying that "To anyone, anywhere, there is no reason not to claim when you're under that kind of pressure" is plain wrong. Sometimes you should, sometimes you shouldn't. I could see a scenario where my claiming tracker, as SDK requested, would result in them executing the kill with someone I would be less likely to track (like LaserGuy), thereby making my results a lot less helpful. Same when I was blamed several games back for claiming PGO in the first post. Or false-claiming PGO. Presenting something people don't expect allows you to see how they react, and makes it easier to catch scum. That's the whole point of the game. This might be my last game for a while because this is just annoying.

I am not saying that everything I did this game was, in retrospect, right. But part of what I'm trying to do is something Lataro pointed out back when he played - I'm trying to build the kind of meta that does not allow me to be easily read, regardless of whether I'm town or scum. And at times that means acting scummy when you're town. That's partially why I've made it a point to push some buttons or say something weird in my first post.

Finally night killed! I’m never night killed. I suppose I should take it as an encouraging sign that others are finally starting to fear my deductive powers.

Not reading spoilers yet because I like the puzzle, but will probably read them tonight. I’m pretty sure I won’t be needed as a replacement.

My gut told me dimochka was town, even though my brain told me he was scum. Maybe my gut is getting more reliable. Or my brain was being dumb. dimochka is one of the best players I know (I would put him in my top three ever of people I have played with), even though he denies it. If he was scum he would't have been lynched.

jimbobmacdoodle is scummy mafia. SDK is his partner for pretending not to see the obvious. I should have pushed this a little more on D1, but SDK waited so long to do his read that I ran out of time. And that’s another reason I should have suspected SDK earlier. And SDK was so uncharacteristically wrong about me.

Mafia #3? I guess I’ll go with LaserGuy. This comment has been bothering me.

As I said in my earlier post, reviewing your play as a whole, I find most of your content to be very townie. On the specific issue of how you've dealt with your early vote, your play seems to have been opaque for the sake of being opaque, which I don't associate with townie play at all. But it might also just be that you're trying to generate content by being a jerk, which, from what I gather, is well within your meta.

The comment was boarderline acceptable, and SDK let him get away with it. I assumed it was because LaserGuy is a newbie, but now I think they’re scum together.

Well, N1 went about as good as we could have possibly wanted. Doctor, tracker and cop dead, and maybe some other bonuses too.

jimbob nightkilled bessie (sorry!), so the SK presumably killed plytho. I roleblocked BoomFrog, and SDK rolecopped Frozen. jimbob passed his fake cop glasses to plytho, but this ended up a wasted action.

SDK found that Frozen is JoAT. I'm thinking there's a good chance that he may have copped me (as I was his scummiest read after dimochka), both because it seems like the most sensible play, and also because of how he seemed to back off right away from me vs. BoomFrog. This could put us in a really advantageous position if it turns out to be the case.

SDK is eying up Gopher for the lynch. Carlington is looking like a good candidate too though. If Frozen did cop me as town, he might be willing to help swing the lynch to BoomFrog.

I considered writing you a separate piece of death flavor because of circumstances but that would have meant that you would have been unable to come back as replacement. It is very unlikely that this will be needed but I didn't want to deny you the opportunity.Happy to talk after you read the spoilers.

Dark Tower @dimochka

Spoiler:

You had 6 votes, 4 of them were scum. They will attack you no matter what you do, don't take it personally. Quick example from own experience: I was SK in Impromptu Mafia, got lynched D1 for basically no good reason whatsoever. Was extremely frustrated, until I learned that no townies voted for me, I was killed by rolebuying scum + Jester. Immediately felt better. Please don't let this deter you from playing in the future.

As much as I would like to be back in this game, the idea of zombie replacement doesn’t appeal to me at all. I’ve never done it, but I feel that I always put everything I have in to whatever role I am playing and could never do justice to another role in the same game. The only time I willingly volunteered was to try to get mpolo out of Diablo (but you didn’t kill me soon enough!). Fortunately, this group looks reliable, and Madge and freezeblade are standing by.

And dimochka, if you’re reading this, I should finally have time to clean up my Diablo notes for you. Expect to hear from me this week.

Right, so this private chat is getting to me. Can I trust them? They can trust me. I would not be surprised if laserguy is right, which would mean I'm talking to the SK. That would be interesting. They say they are a vig. If they are mafia, I don't think that they will off me, especially with myself looking scummy, and one of their members in my chat. They could easily influence me.

If I ever mod again it will be a 'Turbo' with 3-4 IRL days per gameday max. I guess the same amount of content would be produced as with a full week available just a bit more concentrated, which I believe would be a good thingTM.

Is this going to be a repeat of that neighborhood game where I literally pointed out the entire scum team D1 and everyone ignored me and we lost? I was wrong on Laserguy (something stood out, but wasn't enough to make him look scummy), but damn it why isn't jimbob lynched yet? I don't understand why people aren't just getting rid of him!! At least believe me on my town reads, or put a bit of weight to it!

If you're curious about the origin of my avatar, google "Cheburashka".

I think it's funny how 3-4 days per day would be "Turbo" here. The games I played before playing here were generally 24-hour days + 24-hour nights. There was a lot less strategy and metagaming as well - I certainly never saw a "read list" back then, everyone just had fun pointing fingers. That was why I stopped playing here after just two games - it feels like a bigger commitment, and if you don't post or analyse as much you get seen as scummy.

I think the slowdown is caused by high percentage of scum plus a few town lurker types plus my call for lurkers to post so others are waiting on them. Most of that is town's fault and we shouldn't be rewarded for it. An extension would be good for town but not good for fun or balance. So I won't say it in thread since it could be seen an "untowny" but I recommend against an extension.

EDIT:Dark Tower

Spoiler:

SK mpolo please don't kill me.

"Everything I need to know about parenting I learned from cooking. Don't be afraid to experiment, and eat your mistakes." - Cronos

So jimbobmacdoodle, why did you kill me? Were you afraid because I picked you out as mafia on D1 and left some hints that I had your scum partner too? Did you remember that I have an issue with tunneling? Or did SDK have to warn you that once I lock on to someone, they will have to kill me because I will never let it go (I’ve said this to him in mason chat).

Or did you kill me because I was too townie to get mislynched? Can you at least pretend it’s the former?

plytho wrote:People are right to be impressed by those deductive powers. That's 3/3 on the scum team.

I had the first two on D1 but didn’t have LaserGuy until I saw the flips. And I would have been wrong on the serial killer. I think Carlington’s been scum for so long he’s forgotten how to act townie.

Sabrar wrote: I felt the scum-team being a bit weak in my most recent games so I might have gone overboard and made them too strong this time, we'll see.

You think? Let’s see.

Mafia powers-day chat-factional one-shot ninja kill-mafia can execute the kill and use a power in the same night-godfather/roleblocker-rolecop-false inventor, with a one-shot watcher and a one-shot bullet proof that protects against the serial killer (and the town vigilante?) that he may pass along to members of his own team-the town cop gets a result of town/not-town

The serial killer is immune to night actions.

Town powers-doctor, cop, tracker,watcher, JOAT-one-shot vigilante with a one-shot bodyguard that required targeting -no masons, no roleblocker, no jailer, no bulletproof townie

So Sabrar, I’m wondering, how is mafia supposed to lose this game?

dimochka wrote:Is this going to be a repeat of that neighborhood game where I literally pointed out the entire scum team D1 and everyone ignored me and we lost? I was wrong on Laserguy (something stood out, but wasn't enough to make him look scummy), but damn it why isn't jimbob lynched yet? I don't understand why people aren't just getting rid of him!! At least believe me on my town reads, or put a bit of weight to it!

I hear you. Unfortunately, I think, at least in my case, they are equating towniness with cluelessness. I’m used to my reads getting no respect, kinda mirrors my life. I’m not sure why they’re ignoring your reads though.

I'm kicking myself for not watching plytho or Bessie. They were more clearly town then SDK.

I think BoomFrog wants SDK to be town too much and it’s influencing his reads. All his reads in this post require SDK to be town.

And everyone, do you finally get what I’ve been trying to say about the confirmation/pre-game posts? EVERY POST in the game thread counts and is fair game for analysis. I let this one go too easily too.

The Dark Tower @flicky

Spoiler:

flicky1991 wrote: That was why I stopped playing here after just two games - it feels like a bigger commitment, and if you don't post or analyse as much you get seen as scummy.

Hi flicky! Yes, every game I think I’m more experienced so it should get easier, but it never does. The game still sucks up as much time as I can give it. I’m not even in this one anymore and I’ve been typing for an hour.

@dimochka: this forum has a poor track record when it comes to taking into account the opinion of dead townies. Probably people's ego gets in the way (something I'm also guilty of despite knowing that my reading skills are bad).

@flicky:I hear you. Would be great if we could organize some real turbos with people from EMEA timezones (mostly vanilla with max 1 PR, 1 hour days, quarter hour nights). Doubt we would get enough players though.

@bessie: don't believe everything you read in Gojoe.- BodyguardGuardian Angel does not need targeting (though that doesn't really change anything)- Vig is 2-shot if he survives until N4 (and GA should have helped with that)- Neighborizer reveals themselves as Town to all targets- False Inventor cannot pass items to team-mates, that was a misunderstanding on jimbob's part.- using Ninja requires not performing their own ability that night for the player doing the NK- SK can still get caught by Watcher

By the way full role-claims would have cleared a lot of townies in hindsight, even with me providing false-claims to scum. Even now mpolo can clear himself from being scum if people still believe that 8-3-1-1 only works with the non-SK indie being pro-town, thereby Zyth could be confirmed as town as well after which he can clear GoP, reducing the number of possible lynch-targets.Also SK needs to start hitting scum if Town can't lynch them and scum can't defend themselves against him.Town was super-unlucky with D1/N1 but they are still in a position to win this if they do not misread scum to this degree.

On a meta-level: as you may remember in Diablo scum had 0 night-actions when everybody interpreted the setup as all players having some kind of power. In WoT2 scum was super-weak and they could have been identified by a color-claim as suggested by Gopher of Pern. These games heavily influenced my decision in giving scum actual powers and false-claims as I felt I was on the wrong end of the stick before and wanted to avoid the same situation. I apologize if I went overboard, I have little experience of finding a good balance and too proud to ask for help.

Sabrar, no need to apologize, there’s a good bit of sarcasm in my previous post. Town is playing a terrible game. Mafia and serial killer are playing a great game. I should have tried harder to stay alive at least one night, but dammit I never get night killed. And I’m done playing passively; I want to be part of the game or I don’t want to play at all.

If jimbob got to pass a one-shot SK/vig bulletproof to a teammate that would have been way too much. GA not needing to target is a big deal; mpolo’s gojoe post implied he used/wasted it already. It looks like the setup more in line with MMM2, where (I think) town was stronger than here, but mafia still won, so we shall see. It would help if town would quit lurking.

Sabrar wrote:By the way full role-claims would have cleared a lot of townies in hindsight, even with me providing false-claims to scum.

I don’t like townies role claiming to save themselves and I’m glad dimochka is smart and pushed back against everyone that wanted him to claim. We may have lynched someone else (doubtful) but D2 would have been all about dimochka. Again.

Sabrar wrote:Even now mpolo can clear himself from being scum if people still believe that 8-3-1-1 only works with the non-SK indie being pro-town, thereby Zyth could be confirmed as town as well after which he can clear GoP, reducing the number of possible lynch-targets.

Maybe, but this is a tough one to call. mpolo has some suspicion on him as the serial killer. If he claims today he will probably be lynched.

Sabrar wrote: On a meta-level: as you may remember in Diablo scum had 0 night-actions when everybody interpreted the setup as all players having some kind of power.

I’m still thinking about this and writing up my analysis for dimochka. I should be working on that instead of talking to you.

Sabrar wrote: In WoT2 scum was super-weak

Agree, but I think day chat would have completely swung the game the other way.

Sabrar wrote: they could have been identified by a color-claim as suggested by Gopher of Pern.

Don’t agree. I would have (and maybe I did, I can’t remember) argued that color was no guarantee of alignment. Just as I very strongly argued here and here that role names did not follow alignment/abilities in Dollhouse because the mod said so. And Alpha was the serial killer. Dollhouse is still one of my favorite games.

_#HBC | Zyth_ wrote:@CarlingtonDimochka's read of boomfrog made no sense to me because, up to that point, there was literally nothing to go off of. All boomfrog had done was vote dimochka for not liking his retracting of his joke vote. And now that we see how boomfrog is actually playing, it makes even less sense, as to how boomfrog's play previously could get anyone a meta read. Also, I find it hard to believe that anyone would have a meta of doing nothing as town.

Incorrect. He was not doing nothing. He was talking in a way that an SK would never talk (too risky, people can misinterpret and lynch you for no real good reason), and scum would be unlikely to talk until at least D2 (when they've had a chance to agree on a gameplan). There is also a huge difference between SDK's D1 playstyle that game and Boomfrog's.

@Bessie - Yes, my initial plan in Diablo was to make claims unhelpful to both sides, but that wasn't quite the result. Next time I'll try for that again.